[jeffschevelle]

I don't know anything about this particular car and whether it has its born with engine or not. But ---

The trim tag date is based on when the vehicle order was input into the system at the assembly plant, aka the "broadcast date". Actual construction of the car started after that. More importantly, the week coding was NOT the way many folks think it was (with the first 7 days of any month being week "A" and so forth, which was not the case). If that were true then there would not be so many tags out there that have "E" week designations. As far as I know no one really knows when one "week" ended and the next one started, or how it was handled when the month changed in the middle of the work week, which would happen almost every month anyway.

For example, I have an unrestored Baltimore 67 SS with trim tag date 11E. The broadcast cards that were in the seats have "broadcast date" of December 1, 1966. So even though this car's order was not even entered into the system at the plant until December, it has a November tag date.

Another example is the earliest known legitimate factory 67 L78 Chevelle, which has trim tag date 04C and engine date (verified on the original [real] POP) of T0425EG. But the VIN places it as leaving the plant on the last production day in April (car is 172 units from the last car built in April at that plant, so was a "last day" of April car).

So, as I said I don't know about this car, but with February only having 28 days, it is easily conceivable that an 02D trim tag dated car did not actually get built until early March.